Liberty Belle
Well-known member
This is a long read so I only posted the first part of the article. Click the link at the end if you want to read the whole thing.
In a bloody battle over control of public land, Mexican wolves are caught in the crossfire.
By John Dougherty
Jan 2, 2008
Debbie Miller, a hardy brunette with a butterfly tattoo on her right arm, walks past the family shooting range just outside her kitchen door. She is talking about a recent visitor to her isolated ranch house in the high desert rangeland of Catron County, N.M. "She had been in the yard 10 times in eight weeks," Miller said on a sunny July afternoon. "This was like home for her."
It would, it turns out, be the visitor's final home. Miller's guest wasn't exactly welcome: It was a female Mexican gray wolf that was rearing at least one pup in a den not far from here. The alpha female and her mate and offspring made up the Durango pack, which was released last April onto the national forest as part of a 10-year effort to re-establish the endangered Mexican gray wolf in the wild.
Miller's husband, Mike, was none too happy about the Durango pack's visits. Tall and lean with an ever-present Marlboro protruding from beneath his waxed handlebar mustache, Mike Miller is a cowboy on one of New Mexico's largest spreads, the 275,000-acre Adobe-Slash Ranch. His task is to keep track of several thousand cows scattered across some 64,000 acres for the ranch's owner, Eloy S. Vallina, a wealthy Mexican businessman.
Miller keeps an eye on predators that may threaten livestock, especially the Mexican gray wolf. After being hunted to the brink of extinction, the wolf is once again roaming the grasslands, mountains and streams of western New Mexico and eastern Arizona.
So Miller was concerned when the Durango female showed up near his house about a dozen times. Yet instead of trying to scare it off, he did the opposite. On June 21, he branded cattle less than a half-mile from the wolves' den, the enticing aroma of seared flesh surely reaching the pack's super-sensitive nostrils. Miller was, in essence, offering up a cow as a sacrifice.
The government's Mexican gray wolf reintroduction rulebook said that a rancher cannot shoot a wolf simply because she threatens his livestock. But if a single wolf kills three cows or sheep or other domestic animals in a single year, then federal officers may kill or capture the wolf. The wolf Miller had his eye on already had two strikes against her; Miller was hoping for a third.
"We would sacrifice a calf to get a third strike," Miller said, candidly revealing a tactic that could help ranchers get the upper hand in their protracted, bloody war against the endangered Mexican wolves.
Like similar conflicts across the West, the one over the Mexican gray wolf is part of a much bigger struggle for control of the public lands, a battle that pits the "old" users, such as ranchers, against environmentalists and the federal government. But this battle is bloodier than most, and it takes place at the heart of the seething larger war: Catron County, a rugged, remote place where resentment of the federal government is an integral part of the local culture.
Environmentalists are equally unhappy about the situation, angry at the way a consortium of state, tribal and federal agencies led by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is handling the wolf reintroduction. They say the authorities are more concerned with pacifying ranchers, who collectively lose a handful of cattle each year to wolves, than ensuring the successful reintroduction of one of the rarest mammals in North America. Currently, the program has been shooting or removing wolves from the wild at about the same rate as cows are being killed. "You can't recover the Mexican gray wolf with guns and traps, the same measures that were used to nearly exterminate it," said Michael Robinson of the Tucson-based environmental group Center for Biological Diversity.
Ranchers say they have no intention of letting Mexican wolves again roam the landscape to prey on livestock, horses and pets, and maybe even their friends and family. They say environmentalists are using the wolf as a terrorist tactic to force ranchers off public lands they have controlled for decades through grazing leases. "We're not saying kill the wolf. We're saying remove the wolf," said Catron County manager Bill Aymar. "It's not going to end well if they don't remove the wolf."
However you look at it, things aren't going well for the wolves these days. That's partly due to the vehemence of local aversion, which has helped inspire tactics such as Mike Miller's. But critics blame the wolf reintroduction program itself, or at least an aspect that lies at its very foundation. By following political rather than biological protocol, they say, the Fish and Wildlife Service is sabotaging itself: It's dropping genetically weak packs into a hostile landscape where only the strongest have a chance to survive.
The Mexican gray wolf once roamed freely throughout the Southwestern United States and deep into Mexico. But human settlers and wolves have never mixed well. At the behest of ranchers early in the 20th century, the U.S . government began a campaign to exterminate the wolf. And by 1950, all but a handful of Mexican gray wolves had been wiped out.
The killing didn't stop at the border: U.S. officials exported poison and sent American hunters to Mexico to continue the slaughter. By the late 1970s, there were fewer than 50 wolves left. Absolute extinction was staved off in 1976, when the Mexican gray wolf was listed under the Endangered Species Act.
The listing triggered plans to bring the wolf back from near-extinction through a captive breeding program. Between 1977 and 1980, five wild Mexican gray wolves were captured in Mexico. The progeny of three of those wolves, plus four other purebred Mexican gray wolves already in captivity, have provided the breeding stock for the entire reintroduction effort.
The first 11 wolves were released in March 1998 into the 7,000-square-mile Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area, which includes portions of national forests and wilderness areas in eastern Arizona and western New Mexico, as well as the Fort Apache Indian Reservation in Arizona.
Northern Rockies gray wolves had already been successfully reintroduced in Yellowstone National Park in 1995. There, however, the wolves were protected from conflicts with ranchers. In contrast, the Mexican gray wolves were released directly onto public lands long controlled by the livestock industry. Soon after the first release, the New Mexico Cattle Growers Association sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, seeking to stop the program. The ranchers lost that skirmish in the courtroom, but in the wild, the wolves seem to be losing the war.
Wildlife managers have issued orders to kill or permanently remove 59 wolves. Most were removed or shot because they were caught feasting on cattle, even though the dead livestock constitute only a tiny fraction of the animals that graze in the wolf recovery area.
Poachers, meanwhile, have shot and killed another 25 wolves. Only two of the shootings have been resolved: One was ruled self-defense and the other resulted in a successful prosecution. The other cases remain under investigation. Meanwhile, last month, another three wolves disappeared under mysterious circumstances. :twisted:
http://www.fortcollinsnow.com/article/20080102/NEWS/534562462
In a bloody battle over control of public land, Mexican wolves are caught in the crossfire.
By John Dougherty
Jan 2, 2008
Debbie Miller, a hardy brunette with a butterfly tattoo on her right arm, walks past the family shooting range just outside her kitchen door. She is talking about a recent visitor to her isolated ranch house in the high desert rangeland of Catron County, N.M. "She had been in the yard 10 times in eight weeks," Miller said on a sunny July afternoon. "This was like home for her."
It would, it turns out, be the visitor's final home. Miller's guest wasn't exactly welcome: It was a female Mexican gray wolf that was rearing at least one pup in a den not far from here. The alpha female and her mate and offspring made up the Durango pack, which was released last April onto the national forest as part of a 10-year effort to re-establish the endangered Mexican gray wolf in the wild.
Miller's husband, Mike, was none too happy about the Durango pack's visits. Tall and lean with an ever-present Marlboro protruding from beneath his waxed handlebar mustache, Mike Miller is a cowboy on one of New Mexico's largest spreads, the 275,000-acre Adobe-Slash Ranch. His task is to keep track of several thousand cows scattered across some 64,000 acres for the ranch's owner, Eloy S. Vallina, a wealthy Mexican businessman.
Miller keeps an eye on predators that may threaten livestock, especially the Mexican gray wolf. After being hunted to the brink of extinction, the wolf is once again roaming the grasslands, mountains and streams of western New Mexico and eastern Arizona.
So Miller was concerned when the Durango female showed up near his house about a dozen times. Yet instead of trying to scare it off, he did the opposite. On June 21, he branded cattle less than a half-mile from the wolves' den, the enticing aroma of seared flesh surely reaching the pack's super-sensitive nostrils. Miller was, in essence, offering up a cow as a sacrifice.
The government's Mexican gray wolf reintroduction rulebook said that a rancher cannot shoot a wolf simply because she threatens his livestock. But if a single wolf kills three cows or sheep or other domestic animals in a single year, then federal officers may kill or capture the wolf. The wolf Miller had his eye on already had two strikes against her; Miller was hoping for a third.
"We would sacrifice a calf to get a third strike," Miller said, candidly revealing a tactic that could help ranchers get the upper hand in their protracted, bloody war against the endangered Mexican wolves.
Like similar conflicts across the West, the one over the Mexican gray wolf is part of a much bigger struggle for control of the public lands, a battle that pits the "old" users, such as ranchers, against environmentalists and the federal government. But this battle is bloodier than most, and it takes place at the heart of the seething larger war: Catron County, a rugged, remote place where resentment of the federal government is an integral part of the local culture.
Environmentalists are equally unhappy about the situation, angry at the way a consortium of state, tribal and federal agencies led by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is handling the wolf reintroduction. They say the authorities are more concerned with pacifying ranchers, who collectively lose a handful of cattle each year to wolves, than ensuring the successful reintroduction of one of the rarest mammals in North America. Currently, the program has been shooting or removing wolves from the wild at about the same rate as cows are being killed. "You can't recover the Mexican gray wolf with guns and traps, the same measures that were used to nearly exterminate it," said Michael Robinson of the Tucson-based environmental group Center for Biological Diversity.
Ranchers say they have no intention of letting Mexican wolves again roam the landscape to prey on livestock, horses and pets, and maybe even their friends and family. They say environmentalists are using the wolf as a terrorist tactic to force ranchers off public lands they have controlled for decades through grazing leases. "We're not saying kill the wolf. We're saying remove the wolf," said Catron County manager Bill Aymar. "It's not going to end well if they don't remove the wolf."
However you look at it, things aren't going well for the wolves these days. That's partly due to the vehemence of local aversion, which has helped inspire tactics such as Mike Miller's. But critics blame the wolf reintroduction program itself, or at least an aspect that lies at its very foundation. By following political rather than biological protocol, they say, the Fish and Wildlife Service is sabotaging itself: It's dropping genetically weak packs into a hostile landscape where only the strongest have a chance to survive.
The Mexican gray wolf once roamed freely throughout the Southwestern United States and deep into Mexico. But human settlers and wolves have never mixed well. At the behest of ranchers early in the 20th century, the U.S . government began a campaign to exterminate the wolf. And by 1950, all but a handful of Mexican gray wolves had been wiped out.
The killing didn't stop at the border: U.S. officials exported poison and sent American hunters to Mexico to continue the slaughter. By the late 1970s, there were fewer than 50 wolves left. Absolute extinction was staved off in 1976, when the Mexican gray wolf was listed under the Endangered Species Act.
The listing triggered plans to bring the wolf back from near-extinction through a captive breeding program. Between 1977 and 1980, five wild Mexican gray wolves were captured in Mexico. The progeny of three of those wolves, plus four other purebred Mexican gray wolves already in captivity, have provided the breeding stock for the entire reintroduction effort.
The first 11 wolves were released in March 1998 into the 7,000-square-mile Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area, which includes portions of national forests and wilderness areas in eastern Arizona and western New Mexico, as well as the Fort Apache Indian Reservation in Arizona.
Northern Rockies gray wolves had already been successfully reintroduced in Yellowstone National Park in 1995. There, however, the wolves were protected from conflicts with ranchers. In contrast, the Mexican gray wolves were released directly onto public lands long controlled by the livestock industry. Soon after the first release, the New Mexico Cattle Growers Association sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, seeking to stop the program. The ranchers lost that skirmish in the courtroom, but in the wild, the wolves seem to be losing the war.
Wildlife managers have issued orders to kill or permanently remove 59 wolves. Most were removed or shot because they were caught feasting on cattle, even though the dead livestock constitute only a tiny fraction of the animals that graze in the wolf recovery area.
Poachers, meanwhile, have shot and killed another 25 wolves. Only two of the shootings have been resolved: One was ruled self-defense and the other resulted in a successful prosecution. The other cases remain under investigation. Meanwhile, last month, another three wolves disappeared under mysterious circumstances. :twisted:
http://www.fortcollinsnow.com/article/20080102/NEWS/534562462
